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[ToxicAdam]

http://www.livescience.com/humanbiology/050209_under_pressure.html

People perceived as the most likely to succeed might also be the most likely to crumble under pressure.

A new study finds that individuals with high working-memory capacity, which normally allows them to excel, crack under pressure and do worse on simple exams than when allowed to work with no constraints. Those with less capacity score low, too, but they tend not to be affected by pressure.

"The pressure causes verbal worries, like ‘Oh no, I can’t screw up,’" said Sian Beilock, assistant professor of psychology at Miami University of Ohio. "These thoughts reside in the working memory." And that takes up space that would otherwise be pondering the task at hand.

"When they begin to worry, then they’re in trouble," Beilock told LiveScience. "People with lower working-memory capacities are not using that capacity to begin with, so they’re not affected by pressure."

The findings are detailed this week’s issue of Psychological Science.

Working memory, also known as short-term memory, holds information that is relevant to performance and ensures task focus. It’s what allows us to remember and retrieve information from an early step of a long task, such as long-division math.

"In these math problems students have to perform subtraction and division, and if you’re trying to hold information in your memory and you start worrying about performance, then you can’t use your entire mental capacity to do the math," Beilock explained.

The study analyzed 93 undergraduate students from Michigan State University to determine their working-memory capacities. The students were divided into two groups, a high working-memory group (HWM) and a low working-memory group (LWM). Each person was given a 24-problem math test in a low-pressure environment. The HWM group did substantially better.

Then the two groups were given the same test, but were told that they were part of a "team effort" and an improved score would earn the team a cash reward. They were also told their performance was being evaluated by math professors.

Under this higher, real world pressure situation, the HWM group’s score dropped to that of the LWM group, which was not affected by the increased pressure.

Since working memory is known to predict many higher-level brain functions, the research calls into question the ability of high-pressure tests such as the SAT, GRE, LSAT, and MCAT to accurately gauge who will succeed in ...

I knew I was a genius with a 2.0 average!!

I think this study is crap. It's more that some people are better equipped to handle pressure. I don't think intelligence has a factor in that.

 

[Nerevar]

what a load of crap.

 

[Justin Bailey]

Luckily my short-term memory sucks then. No wonder I'm such a good procrastinator.

 

[OpinionatedCyborg]

Define "smart". Just because you're good at math doesn't mean you're good at life--Or drawing straight lines. Stephen Hawking might be able to calculate the rate the LB-091 nebula is accelerating perpendicular to our galaxy's movement, but I sure as hell doubt he can draw a line as straight as I can.

 

[Dilbert]

Actually, based on my experience tutoring people, I would tend to believe this study. The agency that I worked with set me up with kids in fairly advanced classes (AP calculus, physics, chemistry, etc.) because I was one of the few people on staff with that kind of background, so most of my experience was with "smart" kids.

Really smart people often have trouble when they don't know the answer to something immediately or at all. In some cases, they never learned the skills or patience to come at a problem from different angles because everything came so easily...in other cases, the feeling of uncertainty would REALLY throw them off. If you're familiar with the way the AP system works, the goal is to get a 3 out of 5 on the exam. Trying to convince these outstanding students that their GOAL was to average a 60% on both halves of the exam and that leaving the test feeling like they'd missed a ton of points was OK was one of the hardest things to do.

 

[Meier]

I've always been an "A" student but I frequently do (relatively) poorly on tests because I get so nervous. I'm not saying everyone doesnt before a test, but I can see this being true.

 

[Nerevar]

Really smart people often have trouble when they don't know the answer to something immediately or at all. In some cases, they never learned the skills or patience to come at a problem from different angles because everything came so easily...in other cases, the feeling of uncertainty would REALLY throw them off.

I would say that these "smart" people need to learn how to deal with complex problems that don't have immediately obvious solutions. What you're saying is that they're so pampered by being "ahead" of everyone else they don't know how to problem solve. I wouldn't say that it's a consequence of being smart, but rather a lack of a skill set that they were never forced to use and a failure of the educational system that is supposed to challenge them.

 

[Azih]

Yeah if things come easily to you at high school level then you don't get used to using problem solving techniques to figure stuff out (write crap out on paper, look at it from different angles etc.) and you get worried.

Of course this doesn't apply to the high school kids that were bright as hell AND worked like dogs.

Edit: Nerv, the phenomenon remains the same however, the theory as to why it's happening can be debated.

 

[D'ultimate]

Nev, The test is not saying they can't do well. So you....

err, nevermind. Azih said it for me.

 

[darscot]

I'm a smart guy and I do very well under preasure. This has far more to do with ego thenit does smarts. If you have a healthy ego and are confident preasure is nothing. Brains has nothing to do with it.

 

[Dilbert]

I would say that these "smart" people need to learn how to deal with complex problems that don't have immediately obvious solutions. What you're saying is that they're so pampered by being "ahead" of everyone else they don't know how to problem solve. I wouldn't say that it's a consequence of being smart, but rather a lack of a skill set that they were never forced to use and a failure of the educational system that is supposed to challenge them.

I don't like your use of the word "pampered," and don't understand your tone.

Of course they knew how to solve problems -- they wouldn't have had success in school if they couldn't solve problems. The problem was that their thought processes were intuitive, and when their intuition failed them on a particular problem, it was highly disconcerting.

You also can't underestimate the importance of their emotions on their ability to perform. When you grow up as a smart kid, a lot of your ego is based on your ability to know stuff and get good grades. When you're a teenager struggling with the whole issue of "who am I?" to begin with and you run into something challenging and you can't figure it out, it isn't just a mental stumbling block -- it feels like a personal indictment. And, like in any other area, when you're emotionally upset and rattled, you simply don't perform as well. It's also not that different than the athlete who is the best one in high school, but goes to college and gets destroyed by the competition -- you have to readjust your expectations, learn new techniques, and get your emotional balance again.

As you grow up, you figure out that you can't know or do everything, and you get some emotional distance from your failures, and even -- in a strange way -- learn to enjoy them because they are growth experiences. But at the age of the kids I tutored, it was an entirely different thing.

 

[OpinionatedCyborg]

I don't like your use of the word "pampered," and don't understand your tone.

Of course they knew how to solve problems -- they wouldn't have had success in school if they couldn't solve problems. The problem was that their thought processes were intuitive, and when their intuition failed them on a particular problem, it was highly disconcerting.

You also can't underestimate the importance of their emotions on their ability to perform. When you grow up as a smart kid, a lot of your ego is based on your ability to know stuff and get good grades. When you're a teenager struggling with the whole issue of "who am I?" to begin with and you run into something challenging and you can't figure it out, it isn't just a mental stumbling block -- it feels like a personal indictment. And, like in any other area, when you're emotionally upset and rattled, you simply don't perform as well. It's also not that different than the athlete who is the best one in high school, but goes to college and gets destroyed by the competition -- you have to readjust your expectations, learn new techniques, and get your emotional balance again.

As you grow up, you figure out that you can't know or do everything, and you get some emotional distance from your failures, and even -- in a strange way -- learn to enjoy them because they are growth experiences. But at the age of the kids I tutored, it was an entirely different thing.

You made a lot of great points. While I was never an exceptional math student, I coasted through high school easily, scoring low 90s without doing homework whatsoever. However, as soon as I hit calculus, a subject that did require some degree of effort, I was knocked on my ass. It's not that I was lazy or incompetent--it's that I'd never felt failure in that subject before (by failure, I mean a 70). After I got a mid 70 on a test for a unit I thought I knew inside and out I actually was depressed. Looking back, my reaction to a minor setback was stupid, but not completely irrational.

A person's emotional IQ is probably just as important as their inherent intelligence. Just because you have the ability to perform a task doesn't mean you're emotionally stable enough to do so. Studies have shown that people with high EQ's get farther in life than those with lower EQ's and higher IQ's.

 

[LakeEarth]

I'd consider myself smart and yes, I do crack under pressure. I have figured out a good way of not completely falling apart during exam time (to stop studying around 8pm the night before and play a game or something) but it still gets to me. I've also decided not to persue my doctorate in biochemical research because I just can't handle the pressure of writing a 200-300 page thesis paper.

EDIT - I wrote candle instead of can't handle... what the fuck is wrong with me :lol

 

[tedtropy]

EDIT - I wrote candle instead of can't handle... what the fuck is wrong with me :lol

IT'S THE PRESSURE. ANRGHHH!!!

 

[LakeEarth]

GAHHH TOO MUCH PRESSURE

 

[gofreak]

I definitely work better being left to march to my own beat, i.e. no pressure, no expectation etc. But I don't get easily phased, I never get "oh shit, i can't screw up!" type feelings in stressful/pressuring situations.

Not to say I'm smart or anything..

 

[Nerevar]

I don't like your use of the word "pampered," and don't understand your tone.

Of course they knew how to solve problems -- they wouldn't have had success in school if they couldn't solve problems. The problem was that their thought processes were intuitive, and when their intuition failed them on a particular problem, it was highly disconcerting.

You also can't underestimate the importance of their emotions on their ability to perform. When you grow up as a smart kid, a lot of your ego is based on your ability to know stuff and get good grades. When you're a teenager struggling with the whole issue of "who am I?" to begin with and you run into something challenging and you can't figure it out, it isn't just a mental stumbling block -- it feels like a personal indictment. And, like in any other area, when you're emotionally upset and rattled, you simply don't perform as well. It's also not that different than the athlete who is the best one in high school, but goes to college and gets destroyed by the competition -- you have to readjust your expectations, learn new techniques, and get your emotional balance again.

As you grow up, you figure out that you can't know or do everything, and you get some emotional distance from your failures, and even -- in a strange way -- learn to enjoy them because they are growth experiences. But at the age of the kids I tutored, it was an entirely different thing.

I dont' really want to get in an argument about this, so I'll just leave it at the fact that my experience was very different than that. I never identified myself by my grades - maybe it was the fact that I was playing sports in high school and I felt that was more an identification than anything else. And I never felt a personal failure at an inability to solve a problem. I think these are consequences of over-coddling people in school and not teaching them that failure is an integral part of learning early on. Maybe it's because in my school district the "smart" kids were placed in math classes several grades ahead of everyone else and we were challenged early on. I understand your point about adjusting your expectations, but my point is that skill set should be developed at a young age (the middle / junior high school level), and shouldn't be a major problem for a group of college students.